A view of the Yorkville hills on New Year’s Day

When I was a child my mom had cloth calendars that she hung near the kitchen. These had three rows of four months each, January through April, May through August and September through December. I’m pretty sure these arrived each year in a gift package from mom’s friend Alma who lives in New Hampshire. She’d send the calendar and at least one gallon of maple syrup, plus some maple sugar candies of one kind or another. But the calendar really made an impression on me and to this day, in my head, January is to the above right of December, three rows of months up and we work our way down the calendar as the year goes by. So, the top of the year is January.

When I last wrote, I was struggling with the holiday spirit and we were recovering from our surgeries. We made it through and most of it was enjoyable. My husband ended up with bronchitis about a week after his surgery, adding insult to literal injury; this made our whirlwind trip to his folks and then down to our granddaughter’s more of an ordeal than it should have been. But we did get to spend a little time with everyone and had a good pre-Christmas Chinese dinner at his sister’s. The granddaughter’s winter show was cute, with lots of very young children singing and dancing, sometimes in sync, mostly not.

We had good friends come stay at the ranch for about four days, a few before and after Christmas, and that was really nice. We cooked meals together, watched some Christmas movies, took a drive out to Fort Bragg on a really beautiful Christmas Eve day and then had a really nice evening at my brother’s on Christmas, eating, opening presents, visiting with my nephew down from Alaska and playing Farkle at the end.

The time between Christmas and New Year’s was quiet; I watched most of the Harry Potter movies as I had only ever seen the first two. I didn’t quite finish, I still have half the penultimate one and the last one to go. We went up the road a few minutes to a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve; we shared a lovely meal and lots and lots of wine and bubbles, then played a game until close to midnight. I fell asleep on the couch at 11:30 PM and they woke me up for midnight and we headed home soon after.

New Year’s Day found us out in Yorkville at a friend’s ranch; we wanted to take a drive around the ranch and had use of their ATV, a side-by-side jeep-like vehicle. We drove all over and I saw parts of the ranch I’d not seen before. It was a beautiful, if cold, day and it was a lovely way to spend the first day of the New Year. Just as we were wrapping up the ride, we encountered a large herd of pigs. My husband shot one, then we chased another group for a while trying to get another good shot, but without luck. We went back to the dead hog and found that it was a huge male. Normally, this is not a good thing - male pigs in our region are not clean creatures and their meat reflects that; however, this one was at least partly a different breed and so we kept it and, so far, it has been delicious.

What about real estate, you ask? I know of several agents who were busy with showings over the week between the two holidays and I myself have been busy with showings since the 2nd. There is a lot of activity out there, meaning there are buyers. I have shown mostly my land listings, but also a couple of others in higher price ranges. It’s not a booming market, but it’s not a bad one either. I think we are adjusting to the interest rates and, if they can figure out the insurance situation in our State Capitol, things will get even better.

Top of the New Year to you!